Gaining a heart of wisdom
Around our house there's a bit of common wisdom: If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape. If it won't move and it should, use WD-40. Raising four boys over the past twenty years, there have always been plenty of applications for both remedies. Life Unstuck is another remedy for the stuck places in life as Pat Layton… Continue reading Spiritual WD-40
Loved Back to Life by Sheila Walsh is not a story about the good life, of God miraculously keeping His children from all difficulty. Like David's psalms, it serves as a record of the dragon's mouth, the flood's torrent, and the God who does not abandon. Carried by faith through a difficult childhood, Sheila Walsh began her… Continue reading Journey of the Soul
We've heard the stories so many times that their plots no longer phase us. Five husbands? Sure. Jewish women publicly washing the Messiah's feet in costly oil? Why not? A show-down in the temple between Grace and Law? Yeah, it's fun when Jesus outsmarts the Pharisees. A desperately ill woman healed in a crowd with just a… Continue reading Five Women. Five Stories.
"Why would God want us to speak to Him?" William Philip's question stopped me in my tracks because most authors of books on prayer argue from the opposite perspective: "Why should you want to speak to God?" Forever curious about the nature of God and constantly frustrated with my inconsistent prayer life, I found biblically-based and deeply thoughtful reflections… Continue reading Thinking God’s Thoughts After Him
What if you really believed what the Bible says about God -- that He loves you like a perfect Father, like a perfect Husband, like the perfect Friend, like the perfect Leader? What if you let the truth sink into your soul that God's perfect love is not tied to your performance or to your success or to the… Continue reading Trading Guilt for Grace
Soon the Leprechaun traps will appear in our home, constructed from oatmeal containers, Legos, Lincoln logs, and an old cracker box painted green. They get a bit more sophisticated every year, but the bait is always the same: the golden Legos and anything else the boys can find that resembles gold. In the many years… Continue reading A Saint to Celebrate
When we named our four boys, we were careful to discover and to ponder the meaning of the names we were considering before making a final choice. Then, we looked at each newborn and asked ourselves if the name fit and if its meaning would be a blessing to him throughout his life. Names matter. In… Continue reading Names Matter
I did not intend to have a dog in my home who is so tall that he can rest his chin on the dining room table. It was never my intention to take walks with one hundred and fifty pounds of dog on the other end of a leash, and I certainly did not plan to love that long-haired slobber… Continue reading Sit. Stay. Abide.
Going into a job interview, I used to worry about over-selling myself. At some point, I decided that I would rather lose out on a job opportunity than to suffer the indignity -- six months down the road -- of wondering if my boss was wishing she could find that stellar employee she had thought she was hiring. … Continue reading Intimacy 101
Another name has joined Father Tim and the Reverend John Ames in my directory of beloved fictional pastors. Rowdy Slater stands apart from the others (and from most real life pastors, I expect) in two important ways: 1. Neither Fr. Tim nor the Rev. Ames could look out over his congregation and say, "At one… Continue reading The Redemption of Rev. Rowdy
Living Our Days 